The Invite (Olivia Wilde, 2026): 4/5
Without mentioning any names, I know the nervous-energy decorator and the frustrated stoner musician characters pretty well. The film is bravura display of group dynamics and group acting in perfect rhythm—like a band playing together and off one another. Very fun and funny.
Magellan, 2h44m (Lav Diaz, 2026): 3.5/5
A languorous but very beautiful movie. Stunning use of color and light on landscapes, in rooms, in the sky and sea, on sails, under trees. Interested in characters not so much for their interiority but for how they fit into their landscapes and their time. The great expanse of time is challenging, but there’s plenty of time to think about things like mutiny and homosexuality on ships or Gael Garcia Bernal rather minor career—or the dupe and destructiveness of Christianity in Asia (and Africa), where crosses replace ancient traditions that connect people to their ancestors and the landscape.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Destin Daniel Cretton, 2026): 3.5/5
Like Disclosure Day, this features a candy-colored shell of expert and enjoyable action encasing a gooey center.
It Ends (Alexander Ullom, 2026): 2/5
Think-pieces tie this one to Backrooms for its “horror of liminal spaces,” here an endless road trip. But the film this most resembles is The Long Walk in that the simple premise is established in the first 10 minutes, and thereafter there is no complication, elaboration or payoff.
Night Movies, rw (Arthur Penn, 1975): 4.5/5
I underestimated this movie, which I last watched maybe 35 years ago. It’s a classic of the paranoid thriller genre. There are explicit references to the death of JFK and RFK, and the narrative plays a wonderfully paranoid trick. At the one-hour mark, the detective has performed the action he was hired for. Thereafter, the detective returns to the scene of his accomplishment (Florida) and the film offers three more solutions in 30 minutes: a bad guy, but behind him another, and behind him another—ultimately breaking through the frame to attack Hollywood itself. Features the same editor as Bonnie & Clyde and offers a beautiful, jazzy (and mostly rejected) take on moving from scene to scene.
The Vast of Night, rw (Andrew Patterson, 2019): 4/5
Filmmaking at a very high level. A 5-minute one-er at the 20-minute mark connects two of the characters in the frame, the 10 minute one-er that follows that one sits on the protagonist’s face while a deep mystery unfolds, and the 4-minute one-er that follows that is a mind-bending traveling shot across, through and around to connect the two characters within a very specific geographic proximity. The second half is merely good. Looking forward to seeing Oklahoma-native Patterson’s second feature, The Rivals of Amziah King, in theater(s) now.
Aventurera (Alberto Gout, 1950): 3.5/5
This almost feels like a Bollywood movie, with its fever-pitch melodrama, pathos-evoking limping mutes, and many elaborate musical numbers. Turns out it’s a particularly exuberant example of a popular Mexican genre, cine de rumberas or fallen-woman melodramas, swift and full of event. At one point our protagonist, the astounding Ninón Sevilla performs a dance that involves (brief) simulated masturbation while wearing pineapples on her head and an outfit that seems to simulate her pubic hair. Wowsers.
Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964): 3.5/5
Michael Mann put this on his S&S Top 10, and it’s easy to see why: a characteristically Mann-ish blend of romanticism and nihilism, with tons of cool and style. A tight lipped but competent gangster gets out of jail, meets a girl, hangs out, gambles, and eventually stoically accepts a suicide assignment to save the girl. Says stuff like: “I play cards. What else is there?” and “I’m the scum of the earth, but I forgive myself.” Shot in beautiful but harsh deep blacks and blown out whites.
Ever Vanishing Present, 48m (Toshihiro Matsumoto, 2017): 3.5/5
Is it the present that is vanishing or the past? I find it fascinating how obsessed she is with remembering—like a person who has lost a leg reaching for it thousands of times a day and obsessively longing for it to be there. What does it mean that she needs to write to live? Certainly, her notes aren’t necessary for her to feel and enjoy the world around her—or to be the “she” that she is at any given moment. And they aren’t necessary for her own profound conclusions about her life: “If I could learn to enjoy myself just as I was, I thought I could be fulfilled. I think that is why I find myself laughing so much.” And: “Take good care of the people you meet, and enjoy every day.”
Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949): 3.5/5
Demonstrates that there are at least two movies called Obsession (along with Visconti’s take on The Postman Always Rings Twice from 1943) that are better than this year’s. In this droll and black-hearted noir, a jilted husband keeps the other man locked up in a basement for weeks. He doesn’t want to kill the guy until he’s sure he won’t get implicated and caught. Then a very clever police inspector shows up. The mystery’s solution hinges on something I also love about The Big Lebowski: the fact that language is passed from person to person. Lubowski sees George Bush Sr. say “this aggression will not stand.” And later the phrase just comes out of his mouth too: "This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man." Like William S. Burroughs says, language is a virus.
Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981): 3/5
You can feel the shag and ambiguity of 70s cinema make the turn to a more direct and black-and-white morality. Stallone sports Pacino’s beard and poofy hair (and he looks great when he’s running) but this is no Serpico. Cocky yet incompetent terrorist Rutger Hauer impresses with his intensity and sweatiness, the year before Blade Runner. The inevitable NYC subway chase is dynamic, but the conclusion, which presents a hostage situation in a cable car 250 feet above the East River is static and drawn out. There’s a good chance I would have been thrilled by this if I had seen it upon its original release when I was 14. They definitely jumped a real bus into the East River and filmed it sinking. Suck on it, Nolan.
Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997): 2/5
A slow and awkward murderous melodrama set in a small community where the women feel all the feelings, and the men do what they want. As a result, the women devise to control the men through prophesy and superstition, to mixed results. This dystopian view is never truly acknowledged or criticized, however, and the women continue to think themselves superior.
BOOK NOOK
The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
I’m reminded of Robert Silverberg’s dictum that a science fiction short story must have something new on every page. This is a sci-fi novel that keeps up this pace over 260 pages. At first this is exhilarating. Bester’s imagination is limitless, and the world is constantly shifting based on what you’re discovering about it. But over the course of the novel, it’s finally just dizzying and exhausting. And since the protagonist’s personality, outlook, attitudes, opinions and goals are also ever-evolving, there is finally a cipher at the center of the eventful narrative, and the experience is a hollow one.
